


Tanner's Mission

by Castillon02



Series: Bond Goes Forth [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: 007 Fest, Crack, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Non-Graphic Violence, briefly implied misuse of altar candles, food discussion cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castillon02/pseuds/Castillon02
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tanner goes on a mission to thwart his arms-dealing doppelgänger. Bond goes undercover and tries out a new form of transportation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tanner's Mission

**Author's Note:**

> For this 007 Fest Fandom Exchange SFW prompt: “Bond/anyone. Bond goes out on a mission with someone. They both end up injured in hospital together and are hospital roommates.” Thanks for the great prompt, anon!

“Tanner, it’s got to be you,” M said.

“Oh,” Tanner said, “so it has.” He stared at the picture of Mr. Beauregard on M’s desktop and willed it to transform into the likeness of a man who wasn’t his bloody doppelgänger, an arms-dealing bigwig, and a Francophile to boot.

In front of M’s desk, 007 was blank-faced in a way that meant he was sniggering himself silly on the inside and Tanner was going to get the full audio version at their next lunch together.

“You have had some field experience,” M pointed out.

“Yes, sir,” Tanner said.

The fact that his only organized field experience had been over a decade ago during his time as an MI6 recruit echoed loudly in the following silence, as did Bond’s unsubtle cough.

“Bond will present himself as a bodyguard and capture video of Beauregard’s movements for you to study,” M said, reiterating the plan that he’d briefed them on before revealing exactly who Beauregard’s double was going to be. “When the time is right, he’ll smuggle you in, subdue Beauregard, and help you take Beauregard’s place. You’ll assign Beauregard’s associates to missions that will lure them into traps we’ve set, and they’ll believe Beauregard has betrayed them. Are you willing?”

“Yes, sir,” Bond said, pro forma.       

“Of course, sir,” Tanner said. What was he going to do, say no? His wife was going to kill him for going on such a short-notice “business trip,” but Beauregard was a global arms supplier and an important arm of SPECTRE, and Tanner had dedicated his career, in part, to eradicating both.   

“Very well,” M said. “Report to Q Branch for your equipment and travel documents. Tanner, a word.”

Bond left. Tanner waited.

“Tanner,” M said, “you’re an excellent chief of staff, and you’d better not get yourself killed. That said, I think you’ll acquit yourself well on this venture. Think of the hired muscle as new recruits and the SPECTRE affiliates as brown-nosed bureaucrats and you’ll soon summon a convincingly tyrannical attitude. Don’t let 007 run roughshod over you, but listen to him when you’re in the field and he’ll bring you out alive. All right?”

Tanner nodded. “All right. Thank you, sir.”

“And Bill?” M looked him straight in the eyes. “No heroics.”

Surely M thought he was more sensible than that! Tanner raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Of course, M.”

“Good,” M said. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

***

“Did you really think you could get away with it?” Beauregard asked Bond. “Poisoning my own woman against me?”

Bond, on his knees with his hands ziptied behind his back, glared up at Beauregard without answering; his shoulder hung at an alarming angle, and the party hadn’t even started yet. Around them, the feral mass of Beauregard’s hired help hissed and grinned.     

No heroics. Right. Damn Bond’s seductive spy tactics to hell.

Tanner stopped looking at the scene on his mobile, courtesy of the video bug Bond had planted while supposedly securing the area for Beauregard. He took a deep breath.

He had the tacky suit. He had the Q-Branch voice modulator. He’d studied. He could do this.

He stepped out of the closet Bond had stuffed him in and took three steps down the corridor. Then he walked into Beauregard’s entry room like he owned it and Beauregard was the asshole who’d shat on the floor.

“Did _you_ really think you could get away with it?” Tanner asked. Malice curled into his voice like syrup, sticky and staining. “My man was only trying to tell my wife the truth—the truth that she was sleeping with an impostor!” He pointed an accusing finger at Beauregard.

“What? No! Impostor?” Beauregard’s understandable confusion sounded faker than Tanner could ever have hoped for.

On the floor between the two Beauregard look-alikes, Bond had his secretly-sniggering face on.

Tanner surged onward. “Yes, an impostor!” he said. “Sending Brady to prison, foiling our smuggling attempt! And worst of all, that traitorous _boudoir assault_!” Tanner took advantage of Beauregard’s shock-slack body to punch him in the throat.

Bond’s sabotage had done for Brady and the smuggling, of course, and Beauregard’s much gossiped-about “alone time” with his altar candles provided the best scenario for an impostor to brain him and switch places.  

“And YOU.” Tanner rounded on Beauregard’s posse before they could ask any questions, channeling the crazy eyes of every HR manager in the universe. “HOW did you not notice?!”

“He has seemed different lately,” someone in the back muttered.

“Remember when he threatened your mother who died three months ago?”

“Remember when he didn’t whip you for bumping into him?”

Nice to know that Bond’s efforts to drug Beauregard had been working. They’d been banking on the new odd behaviors to cover up any accidental slips on Tanner’s part.  

“You fools!” Beauregard shouted scratchily, leaping to his feet. “You’re being—”

“Don’t feed them your twisted lies!” Tanner shouted, backhanding him to the floor. He turned to two of Beauregard’s least-favorite minions. “Take him away! I have plans for him later. And stuff a pair of briefs in his mouth so he can taste the shit he’s spewing.” He smiled evilly.

“Yeah!”

“That’s the real Beauregard, all right!”

“Give him your pants, Damon! They’re the shittiest!”

Tanner turned his back on the sight of Beauregard being dragged away by his own minions and gestured at Bond. “And free him! He’s the only one of you assholes with a damn brain!”

***

They almost got away with it. Tanner had texted for backup to be on standby and he had a packet of sleeping pills to sprinkle into the night’s “family meal” so that they could exfil without being questioned. There was no way Tanner’s impersonation was going to hold up for long against the suspicious scrutiny of Beauregard’s gang.

Then Bond popped his shoulder back in. “Christ!” He was sweating with the pain of it.

While Tanner stopped himself from wincing in sympathy, a straggling recruit just at the door gasped. He said, “Beauregard would never let anyone take the Lord’s name in vain!”

Tanner locked eyes with the recruit. The recruit bolted, and a moment later they heard shouting down the corridor.  

“Right,” Tanner said, “time to run for it.”

Bond opened the nearest window and shoved Tanner out of it, following a moment later with a pained grunt.  

They ran, panting, across Beauregard’s enormous French lawn and down his ridiculously long driveway.

“You just had to say it,” Tanner said, scrambling to hit the panic button on his phone.

“You should have punched me!” Bond retorted. One of Beauregard’s infamous little “LOVE CHRIST” taps.

Tanner took a moment to be grateful that he’d turned on the ‘record’ function on his mobile before leaving the closet. If they lived, he was going to make “You should have punched me!” his Bond ringtone.

Behind them, shouts rang out: the Beauregard gang mobilizing. Something zipped past them and plowed into the grass a few meters away. Quieter shot than usual—were they using silencers? “Airsoft guns,” Bond said. “They want to take us alive.”

In front of them, the French country road led to a petrol station two miles away, and the local village seven miles after that. They’d never make it if they ran for it.

Bond’s head swiveled from left to right, taking in their options. His gaze landed on the riding lawnmower parked by the gate.

“Oh god,” Tanner said. “That’s not going to end well.” But he still followed Bond and jumped on behind him.

Bond gunned the engine and floored it, racing them down the road at approximately ten miles an hour.

***

“We’d just like to observe you overnight,” Doctor Malakar had said. “Nothing to worry about, but we like to be on the safe side.” The _especially when we’re treating the Chief of Staff_ went unspoken.

Tanner had glanced at Bond, expecting him to protest, but the hypocrite had only fluffed his pillows pointedly. “Don’t you want to stay overnight in medical, Tanner?” he had asked, smiling. “After all, it’s good to be on the safe side.”

And that was how Tanner learned that Bond’s desire to be a shit far outweighed his disdain for following doctors’ orders, and how he came to spend the night in a small double-room in Medical with nothing to do and only Bond for company.

“Why didn’t we stop by Beauregard’s garage, again?” Tanner asked, crunching his ice chips even though there was a nice, hydrating, pain-relieving IV in his arm.

Bond laughed loudly. He was on the good stuff. “Tanner, you know why. He owned a bloody Peugeot.”  

And also the garage, actually a converted stables, had been on the opposite side of Beauregard’s manor house. “You just wanted to pop your riding lawnmower cherry,” Tanner said.

Bond shrugged and then winced. “We all have boyhood dreams, Tanner. Have to seize opportunities where they’re presented. And now you can say you’ve been shot in the line of duty! Silver linings, hmm?”

“The shitty lining,” Tanner said, “is that Moneypenny is never going to let us live it down.”

“Injuries from airsoft rifles gained in high-speed lawnmower chases are nothing to scoff at,” Bond said, faux-solemn.  

Tanner looked at Bond.

Bond looked at Tanner.  

There was a moment in which Tanner could tell that they were both thinking about what would have happened if Moneypenny hadn’t roared up in a Q-Branch-issue Jag with the cavalry behind her, right after they had taken that barrage of ridiculous, painful, mercilessly non-lethal BB pellets. Their lawnmower had spun out after they were hit, probably due to a combination of high speeds and Bond’s weak shoulder, and it had crunched Tanner’s leg beneath it. Bond had popped right up with a real gun in his hand, bristling like a watchdog, but they had been outnumbered. Christ knew what kind of damage a vengeful Beauregard could have done if he’d been able to drag them back to that house. That they’d gotten away with bruises and fractured bones was a damn miracle.

Then Tanner said, “God, his gormless face when I got that man to stuff those pants in his mouth,” and Bond said, “ _Your_ gormless face after that little bastard heard me say ‘Christ!’”

They burst into laughter.

“Shit!”

“Fuck!”

They pressed their pain medication buttons, in Bond’s case uselessly because he had already had the maximum dosage.

Bond said, “I didn’t actually go for the wife, you know.”

Tanner tilted his head. “Wait, really?”

Bond’s shrug was more careful this time and the resulting wince was smaller. “Just happened to be the newest man around,” he said. “Someone she could use to make him angry. I’d want to get my digs in where I could too, if I were married to that prick.”

Tanner groaned. “Mariam’s certainly going to get her digs in when I come home like this,” he said. “First a surprise ‘business trip,’ and then I come home looking like I’ve been run over by a tractor. God help me.”

“She’ll be angry?” Bond asked. “I’d have thought it would be more like,” he pitched his voice high, “ _Ooh, Bill Tanner, what have they done to you? You’d better come let me kiss it better, darling!_ ”  

Tanner squinted at him. “You know my life isn’t a porno, right?”

Bond widened his eyes in mock-surprise.

Tanner said, “It’ll be more like,” he pitched his voice into a comfortable alto, “ _Oh my god, what the fuck happened? BILL TANNER, I told you not to get hurt! All the times you tell me off for not taking a random route to the Tesco’s, and you come home like this? Let me see your fucking face._ And then she’ll probably kiss me and order in a pizza with pineapple on half of it, and ask me about my medication schedule.”  

“Pineapple on half of it?” Bond asked.  

“I hate pineapple on pizza,” Tanner explained, already starting to droop at the prospect. Or maybe that was just drowsiness from the painkillers. Or from the fact that it was night-time. “I’ll have to pick all the pineapple off when I eat the leftovers in the morning.”

“Heathen,” Bond said, as if Tanner hadn’t seen him drink a screwdriver and call it breakfast.

“She’ll mostly be happy and relieved after that first upset,” Tanner continued, “because I’m okay. But after the happy stage she’ll be a bit snappy. It’s no fun when someone you care about scares you, you know. And she understands that my job is dangerous, but she doesn’t like it.”

“Hmm,” Bond said, an expression on his face that Tanner decided to call ‘baffled but intrigued by long-term relationships.’

Tanner’s eyes drifted shut.

Bond said, “Let me know if I can do anything to talk her ’round. I’ve been told that I’m charming.”

Tanner’s eyes flew open. “Sorry?” Bond had never actually volunteered to meet Mariam, and Tanner had always tacitly respected that.

“No need to apologize, Bill. I quite like being called charming.” Bond was already retreating—but it was a slow retreat.

“Come to dinner sometime,” Tanner said. “I’ll bet you a round of golf that Mariam doesn’t think you’re charming at all.”

“Deal,” Bond said. “You can treat us to Sunningdale.”

“ _You_ can treat us to Wentworth,” Tanner said.  

Bond launched into a familiar rant about the over-commercialization of PGA courses. Tanner fell asleep listening to it, and he woke up in the morning to find Bond gone and his mobile returned to him from Q Branch.

The morning after that, there was a knock on his door and a bleary-eyed pizza boy handed him one with everything on it except the pineapple, and said it had already been paid for.   

“Poor man,” Mariam said, leaning into him with a smile. “I suppose he doesn’t know you’ll have to pick off the olives too.”

“Nah,” Tanner said. “He’s just being a little shit.” A little shit who’d been scared for him.

A little shit who, judging by his wife’s grin, would definitely be playing golf with him at Sunningdale this month.

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit is welcome; I'm always looking to improve. Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
